Collect fake half-billion dollar note, don't go to jail

The crime, the judge decided, was simply too absurd to deserve a prison sentence.

Cleland Ayison was facing up to three-and-a-half years in federal prison for trying to pass off a fake document he said was a $500 million Federal Reserve note, or U.S. Treasury bond, from the 1930s.

He flew to Palm Beach County in September 2010 and handed over the note — inside a bank vault — in what he later found out was an undercover sting.

At his sentencing Monday in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, prosecutors said the 32-year-old Tampa man should go to prison after he pleaded guilty to the crime earlier this year.

He hoped to make more than $1.14 million from the deal, which included a plan to falsely inflate the value of a Palm Beach County company's stock in what is called a "pump-and-dump" scheme, they said.

U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas said he did not think prison was an appropriate penalty.

Trying to swindle someone out of more than a million dollars would normally be very serious, but much of the gravity was stripped away when Ayison tried to do it with a fake half-billion dollar note, he suggested.

"It becomes almost laughable," the judge said. "To me, it doesn't promote respect for the law to send someone to prison ... for doing something so silly and outrageous."

Dimitrouleas said he did not fault the FBI or prosecutors for investigating and prosecuting Ayison, but he doubted society would be protected by locking up Ayison.

The judge sentenced Ayison to six months of house arrest, five years of probation and 250 hours of community service. Ayison, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Ghana, must also undergo a psychiatric evaluation and could be deported.

There is no such thing as a genuine half-billion dollar Federal Reserve note, federal prosecutors said.